And this request was echoed frequently for a couple of years.
When the new wife moved into the house, there was a small jungle in the back yard – and goats were an easy and ecologically smart way to clearcut that yard fast, and their droppings would be great fertilizer for the lawn. She grew up a farmer’s granddaughter, and the first ten years of her life were spent on her grandparent’s farm. She learned a lot and that farm was a wonderland, a joyful peaceful place that mentally became a safe spot as she got older. Because of course, we all need that childhood secure memory to tune into when having a bad day, right?
For two years, he didn’t know she was joking. She didn’t want the responsibility of a small herd of goats while balancing restarting her career in a new place. And well to be honest… ever.
It’s been three years since the night I looked at Gary and said “Honey, I really don’t want goats, but if we ever come to a point where the grocery stores are bare, and even meat is a question to find in the stores, I’d like to look into rabbits and poultry.” He was so relieved that I didn’t want goats that it took a moment to register about rabbits and chickens. Those were a “no” too.
Then it became almost a game for nearly three years about backyard chickens – the same level of teasing as the goats because I wanted fresh eggs, and maybe my farmer’s granddaughter roots were raring, or maybe I was just influenced by my friends who were chicken moms. YouTube only enabled this desire for knowledge about homesteading with the channels I followed without fail… Watching Kevin and Sarah at Living Traditions and Jessica and Miah at Roots and Refuge inspired me. I made my “waiting room my classroom” (to use a term Jessica uses often) and dreamed of what I’d do in retirement. Then came the pandemic. My job changed significantly, as for a while hospitals weren’t letting Doulas in at all and coupled with that – I couldn’t travel to train Doulas.
Stuck in lockdown in early 2020, I became inspired by the Youtubers I watched. Devouring their content, I soon added other YouTube channels on the same subjects. Kevin from Living Traditions would mention MyShire Farms as the source for his quail at some point this last year, and turns out they had a channel of their own – so I watched and took notes on all that I could. Missed the live broadcasts, but watched everything I could before moving on to other quail-related channels.
We built a small greenhouse with the help of an incredible neighbor who is near family to us. I had dreamed for years of a beautiful garden and a greenhouse where I could grow things year-round – even in frigid weather and now I finally had it. We bought lumber so Gary could build my workbench and shelves. I found some amazing deals on Rubbermaid®’s five-tier shelving and other metal shelves we could easily convert into greenhouse grow space. I was excited and began to buy seeds too. Mind you, this was now by November of 2021. It might have taken some time to get that greenhouse built from the kit we bought.
The more I researched about Coturnix quail, the more I decided this was something we needed to do – for the eggs and the meat. That silly notion that someday we might need to be responsible for growing and raising our own food had become a reality in the face of everything going on in the world now. My jokes about raising our own food really were no longer jokes, but had become a matter of fact. On Christmas Eve, I went to Tractor Supply® and bought the basics we’d need to feed and water a flock of quail. On December 26, 2021, aka Boxing day, we drove about an hour west of where we live and picked up 31 adult Coturnix quail. Being rational adults, we decided to try with the adults before we invested in an incubator, brooder box, proper heat sources, and all the other things that go along with incubating, hatching, and raising baby birds. Not having a place to raise them in, and with nothing in it but some still empty planters, the beloved greenhouse that I had dreams of for years had become an aviary.
By the way… I love my greenhouse. It’s made by Harbor Freight® and is 10’by 12′. It’s got aluminum framing bolted to a 4″ by 4″ wood base set in the ground with transparent polycarbinate walls. It took forever to get put together and finished because of our lives, not because it was an overly complicated build. I had finally gotten to the point of getting the interior layout designed and was getting those previously mentioned shelves ready to go in. The thing is – it’s not safe for quail. They aren’t smart birds. They flew into the side of the walls head-on. They got their wings bent on the braces of the greenhouse frame, and one of them cut itself on an exposed bit of aluminum edge of a support brace. Keeping them in the greenhouse wasn’t going to work. A fact I was not really heartbroken over, because I really wanted my planting to happen. We had already figured out where we’d put cages in our yard, and Gary got to work on making the first set.
The lumber that would have been my workbenches and shelving now had half-inch wirecloth alongside it. My not-previously-handyman-inclined husband was now enjoying creating double-stacked rollout (for the eggs to roll out) quail cages for us to put those birds in. (They look good too, by the way.) We both discovered a love for these little birds and it only grew exponentially. One week later, we had the incubator, brooder lamp, brooder plate ordered, a Tractor Supply® store membership not only used but starting to build up points, and we had 24 eggs from another local farmer who has become an awesome friend.
That is how we started 2022.
A week after that, Gary finished building the first double-stack quail cage. Not too tall because, well I’m not a tall woman, and I need to reach in to care for the birds.
Our first hatch had 9 make it to where we are today. The incubator is filled and we should see hatchlings sometime this weekend. Our living room is filled with quail related supplies, a reptile tank for a “step-up cage” for our two-week olds to move to when they won’t need the heat plate (by Saturday or Sunday and we have a heat lamp if they aren’t warm enough,) a cockatiel cage for a Q-ICU (they are not the smartest of birds – I think I mentioned that up above) and a converted Sterilite® bin being used as a brooder box.
Gary is working on a new triple-decker cage and we are repurposing a rabbit hutch that a dear friend gave us into a bi-level grow-out cage (we need to make sure the bottom is wire) for when a later batch of birds grows up needing the space.
Have we harvested eggs and meat from Quail? We sure have! Yes, butchering them was rough at first, but I powered through it, and tonight I volunteered to help a friend dispatch and butcher hers when it’s time to do so. The first 8 from that initial 31 of ours are off to be smoked. We’ve been cooking with the eggs and having them for breakfast too. Our birds just finally got over their trauma of moving from the greenhouse floor to their cage and getting enough light to start giving us more eggs. These little birds are amazing as they are ready for butchering or laying eggs by six to eight weeks and that’s really important to us.
Soon, I’ll be planting those previously ordered seeds and letting them grow on the shelves of the greenhouse, and I’ll have two sets of caged neighbors for a while (until it gets a little nicer weather and we can move them to the permanent spot) and I gotta say that life looks pretty good.
Do I want a goat now?
Nope.
But I might… in the future… someday… go ahead with the idea of rabbits or chickens.
Oh and another incubator.
And some land for a bigger homestead.